Wed, May 28, 2014

Valentine’s Day this year was on a Friday. I wasn’t on my Chuck Woolery (Love Connection host; a dating show from the ‘80s…forget it) or anything, rather, I was taking flight with my brogods @themisterceizzo and @CraftyLefty57 at @themisterceizzo crib in the 4th, good old Englewood, New Jerusalem, USA, in midst of one of the 50-11 snow storms that we endured this past winter. As I looked from a bird’s eye view at the ground, I guestimated about how much snow had accumulated in the bro’s backyard. There literally had to be like four or five snowstorms in a two or three week’s period of time, and consistent temps in the mid-20s at best to considerably lower, so there was no melting at all. So I’m figuring, right. I’m guessing at least three feet of accumulation or better. Every street corner in the 4th on Lafayette had at least five feet of snow piled up, cutting sidewalks off, making colored folk like myself have to walk in the streets. Oh yeah…we do that anyway in the 4th (don’t ask me why; I’ve only been mobbing through the 4th the past decade or so). Anyways, we’re in the ciph, feeling real wavy, when I hear wood crack. I was the only one of us three that heard it initially. The second time all of us heard it. The third time the bro’s next door neighbor’s garage came tumbling down, buckling under the weight of weeks of accumulated snow turned ice on the roof. I’m talmbout a garage made of cinderblocks. It was my first live viewing of a natural disaster. All three of us were like WTF for a good twenty minutes. New York Metro got between 57-60 inches of snow this past winter, way, way, way more than a normal winter. I know for a fact that in the past five or so years we’ve had a winter with right under three (3) whole inches of snowfall total. So where does five feet come from? I remember thinking that night that we would never see God’s green earth again; that we were doomed to endure a modern Ice Age. I mean, I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but five or so weeks of not seeing ANY grass is tough on the morale. We’re used to snow up top in the northeast, but not on some eastern European Slavic type ish, and not with those Antarctic low temperatures. We didn’t see 20 degrees a solid two weeks in a row. WTF?
Thankfully, somehow, we were able to escape the coldest winter ever (sounds catchy; maybe I should use that title…) and again see green grass. So far, spring has been fairly underwhelming from a temperature standpoint until the past Memorial Day weekend. We saw a couple days of 85 plus degree weather, so hot on Memorial Day, that I was forced to go on ‘head and throw the good old AC in the window. I had to give the AC the nod for team MVP that day. It was hot(ter) then two MF. It was so hot, slaves woulda called in a personal day to Massa. It was so hot that I saw a Greyhound bus pass by with the dog on the inside. I shrugged when the bus passed by, the dog shrugged back at me and wiped his forehead like “It’s hot, nigga! Fuck you expect?” And I’m talmbout 10 pm and it’s still 82 degrees out, 1,000 percent humidity. Then, I wake up this morning, and it’s like 63 degrees, but throughout the day it felt like it was in the 50s or lower. Throw in a light drizzle from time to time. By dusk, it was actually cold outside. Basically, what I’m getting at is what’s really good with the weather? I’m by no means questioning the BIG Fella up above on how HE does what HE does, I’m just saying that this shit is uncanny AF. It’s like extreme weather these days. One day you want to head to Jersey Shore or Six Flags and the next day you feel like if your pride weren’t so serious you’d reach into the back of your closet and grab that Pelle leather or Polo vest out. I’m no scientist so I won’t bring global warming into the discussion. Church folk will tell you this is a sign that we’re in the last and evil days. All I’m saying is that this is some trippy type shit. I feel like that meme when the bruva had all types of clothes on, not knowing how in TF to dress for the day. For me, it’s made the Weather Channel app on my iPhone one of my most used apps. You have to consult the “experts” before you step out your door each morning, or risk playing yourself. I don’t recall all this insanity back in the day. Some of my conspiracy theorists feel like the weather is being altered by man. It makes you wonder. There’s been OD hurricanes, typhoons, landslides, tornadoes, etc. the past few years, seemingly many more than normal. I read that the Syrians had been working on developing weather altering technology. I don’t put a damn thing past governments and scientists. Global politics is a dirty game, and the enemy has refined, readjusted and redefined how he plays hardball. It’s only fair, cuz we’ve played with no ref since day one. Regardless, this weather is crazy. I don’t know what to expect. But hey, it beats the alternative.
Send all love/hate mail to [email protected]. Follow me on the Twitter @tymonday, as well as my aforementioned brogod @themisterceizzo and our team @crewunB. Pick up some of our fly a la carte apparel after you finish reading. Don’t run down on us and glaze this summer when you see our tees matching our Nikes. We tried to told ya. PS…if you thought that I didn’t know that The Coldest Winter Ever was an acclaimed novel you’re a fucking idiot. And the alternative, of course, to bad weather or anything else in life is always death. Never forget that. Y’all be cool how y’all be cool. Water.